


Volewulf

by Shadow_of_Quill



Series: Jaegerwulves [1]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Ficlets, Gen, Pre-Canon, Psychic Wolves, likely to be jossed, overenthusiastic Jaeger accent, worldbuilding epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5942035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_of_Quill/pseuds/Shadow_of_Quill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from Vole's life, in a world where Jaegers are partnered by psychic wolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Volewulf

**Author's Note:**

> Because my other entry for Lupercalia didn't feature the wolf enough. (Not that this does.)

**First Test**

If they were anyone other than Mechanicsburgers, they'd probably have fled by now. The tunnel they're walking through started with the usual monsters in the walls and undefined slime underfoot, but here, in the dim red gloom, the only monsters around are dead and boneshards crunch with every step each of them takes.

One of the fourteen boys yells as he steps wrong, flailing for help as the ground gives way under his foot. The rest surge ahead as three of them grab him and haul him along, trying to reach the den before something is disturbed enough to come and silence them. Once they're all together on steadier ground, they start glancing around, trying to tell whether they're all still there.

"Hey, where's Ionut?"

"Where's Mika?"

"They were at the back, right?" The boy's voice wavers. "Maybe they - turned back." _Gave up,_ the silent words hang in the air. Some of the boys look behind them longingly at the thought.

Vole sneers at the weaklings around him. They're here to become Jaegermonsters, not scare themselves out of volunteering! This is the best thing possible - the chance to be their masters' eternal soldiers, the ones on the front line of every battle, the ones who can laugh off losing a limb, the ones who make everyone in Europa cower at their name - _the Jaegermonsters!_

Something stirs in the gloom.

The boys at the front of the group flinch, but Vole pushes ahead of them. What sort of Jaegermonsters are they going to make, too scared of their own shadows to face what's coming for them?

The red glow brightens. Vole hurries on, and breathes in sharply as he finally sees its source - the baleful red eyes of the Queenbitch.

Smaller sparks of purple and red glow nearer the ground, and Vole grins fiercely as he realises they must be the eyes of the pups. She _had_ had a litter, then - a litter of wulves raised on Dyne water, to choose and partner with the boys who might become Jaegers.

He never thinks for a moment he might not be chosen. He's right.

The shadow that knocks him to the ground has no spark in its eyes. **Mine,** rumbles in his head, in his mind, and Vole grasps it to him, echoes it, doesn't even know whether the thought is the wulf's or his and permanently rejects the thought that there might be a difference. Just as every Jaeger before him has.

He's the only one of his group to return with a wulf. He studies it, fascinated - the changes to your wulf reflect the changes that the draught will make to you, everyone knows that.

His wulf has palest-grey-blue fur, like the skin of a corpse dead from cold. His wulf has eyes that are bulging pools of liquid black.

His wulf is the most perfect thing he has ever seen.

Saturnus Heterodyne smiles at them both, possessive approval. "Good boys," he purrs, and holds out the Jaegerdraught. "Drink up."

**Displacement**

"Dey are barely Heterodyne!" Vole snarls, trying to make the Generals see for themselves what a travesty these - these _Boys_ \- are in his late master's place. "Dey vill not hunt, dey do not demand de tribute dey should be gettink - dey are - are - "

The Generals exchange bored looks, as if none of them care about what he's trying to tell them. Most of their wulves have actually fallen asleep - only Zogwulf eyes him and Volewulf with suspicion, green-and-white brindled fur raised in a strip down his back. "Dey are our masters now," Goomblast says, with the strained patience of someone who has had this conversation many times over the centuries. "Ve are _Jaegers,_ und ve are loyal to de Heterodynes, alvays."

"Bot -" Vole tries.

"Eefen hyu dun't like dese vons, vait a few decades. Dere'll be anodder before a century's gone," he's told, as if _he's_ the problem here.

"Und eef dey are as bad?"

"Den vait longer." The finality of the words makes his blood boil, makes Volewulf snarl, but they know they cannot defeat the Generals and so they bow their heads and leave, tail between Volewulf's legs.

"Dot boy vill be trubble," Volewulf hears as they go, and they both bristle at the injustice.

"Hy chenged to serf de _Heterodynes,_ yas, not de milksop he merried, und dey are too much _her_ cheeldren," Vole grumbles. The Doombell is due to be rung, and then the false Heterodynes will be rulers of Mechanicsburg.

He may be slightly laxer about his guard duties than his brothers, but he tells himself it doesn't matter. So Volewulf is snacking on a mimmoth-nest instead of sniffing the people who come near to check for poison. So Vole is accepting every statement of "It's a ceremonial blade/blade-launcher/death-ray," without even pretending to pay attention to whether the thing is dangerous. It doesn't matter.

The bell rings, and for one glorious moment, everything feels as it should - and then a still-wobbly assassin makes her move, and the Heterodyne Boys win over the older humans by starting their reign covered in the blood of their enemies, as is proper.

Two cold stares turn in his direction, and for a moment Vole thinks he might see something properly Heterodyne in them - he'd be willing to die at their hands if that could change them into the sort of people he swore to serve, his life and his death - but they force it down, turn away.

It's cold. The sun shines, the blood steams, but inside where the packsense and loyalty should be, it's cold.

Vole and Volewulf miss the rage-hate-fire the Boys' father was filled with. They miss how it warmed them.

**Betrayal**

The rest of the pack treat Vole and Volewulf strangely. They try to claim it's their fault, that Vole is withdrawing from the pack, that Volewulf is refusing to share as he should, but Vole and Volewulf know better. They aren't withdrawing. They're standing their ground, holding their loyalty to Saturnus, to their Heterodyne. It's the other Jaegers who are pulling away, letting these weak, shameful _parodies_ of Heterodynes command them.

They try to make it right, the two of them. Remove this weak branch, and leave room for a stronger, truer Heterodyne to take over...

They try. They fail.

And then they're standing before the Generals again, but this time no one's wulf is asleep. The Generals hold their wulves back by the scruffs of their necks, showing clearer than words ever could how much they disapprove.

Vole and Volewulf - don't feel it. Can't feel it.

And the Generals see that.

_"Hyu_ \- are no part off hour peck!" Zod spits, looking as if he's considering letting go of his wulf and leaping at Vole himself.

"If beink part off hyu peck means bowing to dose _veaklinks,_ den, no, Hy em not!" Vole yells, needing them to hear, to understand - he hasn't betrayed them, they've betrayed him, all of them, because the point of a warpack is to _make war._

"Ve release hyu from de Jaegertroth," Gkika sneers, Gkikawulf the black-brown of long-dried human blood. "Und vill gif hyu tree seconds to get avay from us."

Vole and Volewulf take it.

They aren't even hunted down.

It must be because the Heterodyne Boys are too weak to get rid of threats (blood drying on their clothes because Vole let the assassins through, eyes cold and dismissive). Not because Vole and Volewulf aren't dangerous enough to be stopped. Only because those _boys_ are too weak to stop them.

**Employment**

Vole screams, and Volewulf howls in agonised counterpoint.

The Baron doesn't flinch, doesn't stop, doesn't care. "You will work for me. I can use fighters immune to wasps, especially with your one-mind-in-two-bodies advantage. You will **not** -" his eyes flash madly - " ** _dream_** of **betraying _me_** as you did the **Heterodyne Boys.** " Even through their separate/shared pain, Vole/Volewulf snarl at the sullying of the name they once swore to serve.

The Baron twists a single dial, and their pain grows. " **Am I understood?** " he thunders, and they nod. He lowers the dial, but doesn't take the pain completely. "When you aren't fighting, you'll be stationed in Mechanicsburg. I need someone there who understands what's going on around them."

Vole nods again, watching the Baron through pain-blurred eyes. Volewulf's paw is shattered, Vole has at least two dislocations, one of them has lost hearing in one ear.

The Baron is _earning_ Vole's obedience, proving that he is stronger, more dangerous. If those fakes had done this, had punished him for his earlier negligence, he'd...

Vole lets the thought die, part of him aware it wouldn't have been true. The useless Boys were too much their mother's children for a warbeast like himself and his partner to ever be satisfied following them.

"Do hyu vant us shplit op?" he offers. They survived breaking from the Pack. They could survive breaking from each other.

The Baron looks disdainful. "You'd be completely useless as a pair of mindlessly ravening monsters. I have plenty of those - with better inherent armour and weapons."

Vole and Volewulf both cringe at the words. "Bot -" Vole tries, not sure what his argument is.

The Baron snorts. "Just because you're too packblind to notice how badly damaged you are by not being part of one, that doesn't change the fact that without each other you'll both lose everything but your aggression."

**Epilogue**

Miles and years away, a young woman will meet three Jaegers hanging by their necks, with three Jaegerwulves locked in too-small cages nearby. The sleek-furred purple wulf will pose like a showdog, the orange-furred wulf with a single stunted horn will whine and lick her hand, and the green-furred wulf will try to reach through the bars and chase away everyone crowding around her.

The young woman will feel comfortable with them. She'll also feel a strengthening of that strange tug - **Come here, you belong here, you're mine** \- that has been troubling her ever since she lost a certain locket.

She won't know the reason for it. There is one very important rule that none of the Heterodynes ever thought to put into words:

_The Queenbitch is bound to The Heterodyne, as the Jaegers are sworn to The Heterodyne._

Her father and uncle never answered the call. But the Queenbitch can be patient when she must. Sooner or later, a Heterodyne will acknowledge her again.

And when that Heterodyne breeds, so will the Queenbitch.

She hopes none of her children will go astray this time...


End file.
